a heap of broken images
by ncfan
Summary: After all, dreams do have to end eventually.


The title is taken from the first part of T.S. Eliot's _The Waste Land_ , 'The Burial of the Dead.' Because Eliot's one of my favorite poets, and I'm not always very original. This is mildly slashy, but nothing explicit.

Also: I've read spoilers as to the nature of the ayakashi that keeps going after the head of the Matoba clan's eye. I know a bit about it, but the relevant chapters haven't been translated yet. Basically, I know that it attacks every month (like, wow, how nice of it to keep to a schedule; it's not very smart, I think) and that it's a shape-shifter, but that no matter what form it takes, it's always missing its right eye. Pretty much everything else in the fic is speculation on my part.

I own nothing.

* * *

 _Natori Shuuichi:_

 _You are requested to attend the wake of Matoba Kazuya, this Saturday at 8:00 P.M. Please respond by phone or paper to confirm or decline attendance at your earliest convenience. Further instructions are enclosed in the second letter in this envelope._

 _Sincerely,_

 _Matoba Seiji_

-0-0-0-

The Matoba clan's main estate was not a place Shuuichi had ever been, and was not a place he expected he would ever visit again. Non-Matoba exorcists doing business with them were always directed to one of their other houses—didn't want rivals getting a good look at their main base, likely as not; they never hosted meetings there, either. As for funerals, Shuuichi remembered the last time a member of the Matoba clan died, about a year ago. From what he understood, the entire clan and their associates had been in attendance at the wake, but no one from the outside had been allowed to attend. Maybe things were different this time, since it was the head who had died, but all the same, Shuuichi hadn't expected to be invited to the wake.

The directions that had been enclosed with the invitation took Shuuichi some twenty miles out of the city, from pavement to narrow gravel roads lit by nothing but fireflies and what sunlight still managed to peek over the mountains. _Geez, the things some people will do to avoid guests,_ he thought to himself as he pulled up to the estate in a borrowed car, though the thought rang flat, even to him. He paused a moment before getting out of the car, taking off his glasses to rub at his eyes and frown pensively into the gloom of blue-black twilight.

Shuuichi walked the path rather hurriedly, thoroughly uninterested in being caught loitering anywhere by one of the Matoba clan or their retainers (even if he had been invited, Shuuichi wasn't in the mood to test his luck, not here, and especially not when he had told Sasago to stay at home), but there were things he couldn't help but notice. A humid breeze thick with the smell of rain wafted across Shuuichi's face; he heard it blowing, low and soft, through the leaves of trees lost to evening darkness. Faint light emanating from the windows illuminated drooping white hyacinths and pale blue hydrangeas still coming to full bloom. Shuuichi caught the gleam of yellow eyes from one of the hydrangea bushes, and took a step back, back stiffening, but a moment later naught but a tortoiseshell cat slinked out of the bush and, after taking a long, distrustful look at him, disappeared further into the grounds.

The hall where the wake was being held was identified easily enough—it was the only building on the compound that wasn't deathly silent. Shuuichi paused in the doorway, looking around. _Where is he?_ As he suspected, the vast majority of attendees were Matoba clan or their associates, but when he scanned the crowd, he saw a few whom he recognized as exorcists not affiliated with the Matoba clan. _At least I'm not the only one here. But where…_

At last, he spotted him: Seiji, standing off to one side, away from the lights and half-cloaked in shadow, deep in conversation with an especially grim-looking Nanase.

For some reason, Shuuichi's stomach began to churn when he realized he couldn't see Seiji's face.

It would have been more proper to have greeted the host as soon as possible, but something held Shuuichi back. He didn't know what—it might have been the glint in Nanase's eyes, the especially rigid curve of Seiji's back, or something else entirely. The attendees were all broken off into smaller groups, engaged in their own hushed, anxious conversations; their whispering brushed against the high roof and came back down to double the owners' talks. Deep shadows were pushing back against the lights kindled, until it seemed that half the room was totally in darkness, despite the lights at every wall. Everyone gave the bier a wide berth, never approaching it, never even looking at it. It was as though he was staring into a room full of strangers, and not people he saw often, people he drank alongside of, commiserated and occasionally fought with.

Shuuichi made his way to the casket on the bier, weaving his way through the throng, and didn't notice until he reached it that he had been holding his breath. He didn't know exactly what Matoba-san had died of, but there was no missing the fact that the casket was quite firmly shut and the only glimpse Shuuichi could get of him was the portrait propped in front. The photograph in its frame was slightly yellowed and crinkled at the edges; Matoba-san's severe, one-eyed stare still managed to be far more piercing than Shuuichi was comfortable with.

He stepped away from the bier, and his gaze was inexorably drawn back to where Seiji and Nanase were standing. He still couldn't see Seiji's face.

With nothing else to do, Shuuichi found a bench pressed up against the wall and sat down. He didn't notice at first when someone sat down beside him.

"I'm sorry about your father." He didn't need to look. There was enough of the familiar in the way the other sat, so close that their shoulders pressed together (something that would have bothered Shuuichi when they had met, but honestly didn't anymore—he was used to it), for Shuuichi to know.

"Thank you," Seiji replied, with all the rote politeness one would take when addressing a stranger, "for your concern. It was quite… sudden." His voice grew taut at the last, like a bowstring ready to snap.

But when Shuuichi finally looked at Seiji, he thought he must have been imagining it, for there was no trace of distress on his face. He looked much as he ever did, perfectly composed, but maybe just a touch drawn. Shuuichi found his attention distracted more by the fact that Seiji's hair now brushed his shoulders (how had he not noticed that before?) and by the fact that when Seiji met his gaze, he still did so with two uncovered eyes. It might be the last time he did.

"Did you have any trouble finding the estate?" Seiji asked him.

"No, not really. Things got a little hairy when I hit the gravel, but that was just because that part of the road isn't lit."

"Hmm…" Seiji pressed his back against the wall, staring blankly out into the room. "Well, you seem to have found your way here eventually, at least."

Shuuichi blinked and frowned; Seiji didn't usually pass up on the opportunity to jab at some failing of his, whether actual or perceived. He put a hand on Seiji's shoulder and asked, more anxiously than he'd intended, "Are _you_ alright?"

It wasn't like Seiji ever talked about his family all that often—he'd talk about his _clan_ often enough, but rarely his family. When someone in the Matoba clan died, he handled the death with equanimity, so much equanimity, in fact, that there were many who had looked askance at him for it. But it was different when someone so close died. Shuuichi would hardly have called his relationship with his own father a positive one, but he knew he wouldn't be calm if his father happened to die, especially not so suddenly. _He can't really be this calm, not really._

"I'm quite well," Seiji said to him, in a milder tone than Shuuichi though he had ever heard him take. Seiji turned, and smiled at him.

Well, he supposed it was a smile. It went through all the motions of one, from the curve of the mouth to the very slight exposure of teeth, but when he smiled, Seiji didn't look happy, or reassuring, or whatever it was his smile was supposed to convey. The only look in his eyes was one of utter exhaustion.

Shuuichi's voice failed him at the sight of it. They sat in silence, until someone called Seiji away.

-0-0-0-

All in all, planning the wake and the funeral had been surprisingly easy, even with the aid of the clan elders. There were guidelines for this sort of thing, of course, but in Seiji's experience there was always at least one person running around in a panic whenever a wake and funeral needed to be arranged. He suspected things would become more difficult once the funeral was over.

He found that there was a constant ache in the pit of his stomach, a constant heaviness in his shoulders, a faint ringing in his ears, but dismissed them as passing things, to be forgotten as a rain shower in spring. They did not interfere with his work, with his duties; Seiji was unwilling to contemplate them any further.

(He felt absence, too, as he made the rounds through the crowd of attendees, the sting at his eyes that would not go away, no matter how he willed it to be gone. At times it felt like a dream, with all the attending unreality of one. Seiji half-expected to look up and see his father climbing out of the casket like a waking man climbs out of bed.

 _But you know that won't happen, no matter how you wish for it._ )

It was the same refrain, over and over again as the night wore on: condolences, commiseration, _Look at you; you're so young_ , and questions about the future. Seiji did not say that he'd not given a single thought to the future since they pulled his father's body out of the forest. He gave instead the same answers he vaguely remembered his father as having given when his grandfather had died, words he wouldn't remember when the morning came.

At length, Seiji spotted a head of sandy hair in the sea of dark ones, heading for the door. Seiji broke away from the crowd, hurrying towards Shuuichi. "S… Natori-san," he called out, coming to a halt a few steps away from Shuuichi (Further than he would have liked).

When Shuuichi turned to look at him, the sheer look of surprise on his face made Seiji want to scream, if only for a moment. He shelved the feeling the way he did anything that didn't make sense these days, chalking it up to lack of sleep and the fact that he had skipped supper for the third day running.

They stared at one another for a long moment. Seiji watched the progress of the lizard under Shuuichi's skin as he rarely did, as it skittered up his neck and went to hide under his thick hair, willing Shuuichi to say something. He didn't though, and finally Seiji nodded at him stiffly and said, "Thank you for coming tonight, Natori-san."

"Sure." Shuuichi looked at him strangely, as one might have if he had appeared wearing a mask. "Good night."

Long after Shuuichi had vanished from sight, swallowed up by darkness and distance, Seiji stared at the spot where he had been. An onlooker might have thought that he was trying to will him back into that spot, though for what purpose, none could say.

(There was a moment when Seiji wanted to follow him. He blinked, and the desire vanished like mist. It must have been the humid heat of summer, the scent of hydrangeas and wilting hyacinths, the smell of rain.)

-0-0-0-

Everyone knew what was going to happen now. How could they not? The curse on the Matoba clan was hardly a secret, and even if they had tried to keep it a secret, the fact that every head wore a charmed eyepatch over their right eye and tended to end up with scars on that side of their face would have given it away fairly quickly.

 _You are a marked man. You will be such until you die. But that gives you power, and with that power you can lead and protect those who look to you for guidance._

Seiji bore the whispers that dogged him at the next meeting as he ever did whispers: his back straight, shoulders straight, head held high against anything slung at him. He had been stared at and whispered over for years now, and always to the same effect. Whispers were not curses, or claws or teeth or knives. He would not die from them, and would suffer no harm from them. He listened, gleaned what information he could. It was always a good idea to what his competitors were saying about him, he thought.

" _I can't imagine how he's coping so well. Having to head his clan at his age, and just after his father died, too…"_

Maybe some of what they said was disquieting.

Seiji knew exactly what grief was, and what it would do. Grief would creep upon him unawares and dull his eyes and ears so much that he'd not see death until it grasped his heart in its hand, if he let it. Better not to grieve. He had buried his father; let any grief he would feel for him lie with his ashes in the earth. There was too much to be done for Seiji to be weighed down by grief.

(At times, he expected to hear the low rumble of his father's voice in the hallway or in a room he happened to be passing by. In the mornings he was still surprised to find that the place where his father had once taken breakfast was now his. The silence where that voice should have been was so strange, cavernous. In that silence, the patch over Seiji's eyes itched constantly, and he frowned darkly when he misjudged the distance to a doorway or his hand and his pen.)

There was work to be done. Seiji studied spell circles, practiced archery (struggling to accustom himself to the differences in depth perception wrought by the eyepatch), and waited for the week and day when his enemy would first come for him.

-0-0-0-

The first month, the one-eyed ayakashi was spotted from afar, in its true form rather than any borrowed form. It charged and Seiji raised his bow and fired.

The first arrow flew wide of the mark, embedding itself in a tree beyond where the monster was charging from. The second hit its leg, and it hissed and skulked away, vanishing into the dappled shadows beneath the trees.

When Seiji went to retrieve the arrow stuck in a tree, he found that his heart was racing. He frowned at the arrow and jerked it out of the tree trunk with a single, fluid movement. _You'll have to do better than that,_ a small voice sounded in the back of his head. _Do you think you can afford to be lax, when you know what that thing could do to you and yours?_

-0-0-0-

There is an old tale:

Long ago, a boy lived in a deep, dark forest in a house with his parents, his grandparents and his younger siblings. The boy loved his family very much, and wished above all else to live an untroubled life with them, but that was not to be.

You see, the forest the family lived in was filled with ayakashi hostile to humans. Whenever they left their home, the family risked attack, for the ayakashi liked nothing more than human bones and meat to make stew with. Even traveling to the closest town to buy supplies could be a life-threatening journey.

Finally, the boy's grandfather was killed on the way back from town. No one ever found his body, but the boy's father heard his screams and found a pool of blood on the path near their house. A few days later, the children found human bones with teeth marks on them while foraging for mushrooms in the forest.

The boy was determined to protect what remained of his family, so he set out into the forest, searching for an ayakashi who wore the form of an old woman, whom he had heard was friendly to humans and would grant them wishes if they were to find her. He faced many perils and was forced to flee from those who would do him harm many times, but eventually he found the wish-giving ayakashi.

"Tell me, child; what do you wish for?" she asked him, when he found her in her cave. "Wish carefully, for I can grant you one wish, and one only."

"I want to be strong enough to protect my family," the boy replied, "so strong that no one will ever take them from me again."

"Then you shall be." The wish-giving ayakashi gave the boy the power to protect his family, and sent him on his way.

The boy returned to his home in the depths of the forest, now confident of his ability to protect his family and happier than he had been in weeks. As he neared his home, he found his brother and sister foraging in the forest, and ran up to them waving. But they screamed and ran from him, their faces full of fear.

Puzzled, the boy moved on to his home. Perhaps his family had thought him dead, and his siblings had taken him for a ghost. When he came within sight of the house, he saw his parents come out the front door, and thought that they had come out to greet him. However, his father had a pitchfork, and his mother a sickle; his siblings emerged a moment later with rocks. They chased him away from the house, screaming at him to stay away and never return.

Distraught, the boy escaped from them bruised but alive. Why were they acting this way? How could they look at their own kin and react in such a way? Many times the boy tried to return to his home, but he was always driven off. He began to despair of ever returning home. And then, one day, he caught sight of his reflection in a pond.

He had horns.

He had horns, and claws, and sharp teeth and great yellow eyes with slit pupils like those of a snake. He had never noticed it, before now. He had been turned into an ayakashi.

The boy returned to the cave of the wish-giving ayakashi in a fury. "Why have you done this to me?!" he demanded. "I wanted to be able to protect my family!"

But the wish-giving ayakashi only looked at him with a mixture of contempt and pity. "I granted you your dearest wish, but you should know that all wishes granted come with a price. You could never be strong enough to defend your family from the dangers that lurk in this forest as a human. You can either be strong enough to protect your family or you can live your life out _with_ them, but you can never have both. That is the price of strength."

Seeing that he could never return to being human, the boy returned to the place where he had once lived with his family, but he did not reveal himself. He stayed in the shadows, and protected his family whenever they ventured from their house. He watched them all grow old and die, and when there was no one else, he finally made his homecoming without fanfare, greeted only by silence. He sat in the house alone.

-0-0-0-

"So it was finally killed, then?"

Both Seiji and Nanase preferred the outdoors when the weather was still warm. What memories Seiji had of Nanase from his early childhood always involved her being outside—walking through a forest with him and his mother Sayaka, the leaves crunching underfoot, Seiji practicing archery and Nanase supervising, her scratching spell circles into the earth while he watched. If they had any news that needed to be shared and didn't necessitate that they meet inside, this was usually where they ended up meeting instead, at the spot where the archery field gave way to forest.

"Yes, two days ago. I will confess myself surprised; after the trouble it gave ours, I didn't expect someone to have exorcised it so soon."

"There's always someone who gets lucky, though, isn't there, Nanase-san?"

She laughed. "Oh, yes."

Seiji stood in the shade of a large pine tree, idly flipping through an old spell book, umbrella, bow and arrows discarded at his feet. He came upon a certain spell circle and stopped, running a finger over the lines of the circle. He had learned this one as a young child, had had it taught to him by his mother.

For whatever reason, he honestly couldn't remember why now, he'd not wanted to learn anything that day, and had been especially resistant to the idea of going over spell circles. Well, as far as his mother was concerned, that just wouldn't do. _"Why don't we play a game, Seiji?"_ Sayaka suggested. She drew a spell circle on the ground and had him look at it for a minute or two, before covering it up with her blue and yellow flower-patterned haori. _"Now, how much of that do you remember? Can you draw it for me?_ "

They carried on like this for maybe an hour, as Seiji came closer and closer to being able to draw out the entire spell circle without looking at the one his mother had drawn. When at last he could draw the whole thing unaided, he looked to his mother, and she grinned and said, " _So you_ can _be attentive to your lessons, hmm_?" Seiji realized that he had been tricked and scowled, but she only laughed and leaned over to kiss the top of his head.

Looking back, it was embarrassing to think of how easily he'd been tricked, but then, his mother was always a clever woman. Seiji frowned lightly. The book contained many of the circles, spell and charms he had learned over the years. He had no idea why he was remembering all of this now.

Seiji shut the book and turned his attention back to Nanase. "So who was it who dispatched the ayakashi?" he asked curiously. For a moment, he wondered if it had been Shuuichi, but dismissed the notion almost as soon as it occurred to him—the last Seiji had heard, Shuuichi was out of town, working on something or other to do with filming.

"Not one of ours," Nanase replied, her eyes suddenly gleaming sharply. "Matsuoka-san—the one with the sword."

"Oh?" That it hadn't been a Matoba exorcist who killed the ayakashi in question wasn't entirely surprising; Seiji felt like he would have heard about it by now if it had been otherwise. He had met Matsuoka-san before. She was some years older than him, an exorcist of reasonable talent, if one rather too attached to her shiki for her own good. "I'll send a summons for her to come pick up the reward, then."

"You'll be in for a _long_ conversation, at that. She wouldn't stop crowing abou—" Nanase broke off in a sharp gasp, her eyes riveted on the archery field.

Seiji followed her gaze, and quickly caught sight of the only thing that could possibly have made Nanase gasp like that.

Matoba Sayaka was striding up the archery field towards them, her long hair fanning out behind her, her blue and yellow flower-patterned haori flapping in the breeze. She stopped dead in her tracks and smiled at Seiji, more vivid than any memory. The empty socket where her right eye should have been gaped like an open wound.

A snarl tore from his throat. This time, Seiji didn't miss the first time around.

The ayakashi was struck before it could take a single step closer, the arrow lodging itself in its abdomen. With a blood-curdling screech, it fled.

"You know better than to target a vital area," Nanase said chidingly, but even as she scolded him, there was no real edge to her voice. She looked at the place where the ayakashi had been, disquiet stealing over her face before vanishing.

Seiji barely heard her. His blood roared in his ears, his breathing harsh as though he'd run all the way from the main house. Even in the shade, the sun beat down on his back, and in that moment he felt almost absurdly grateful (though he might not know why) that the ayakashi's scream had not sounded human.

-0-0-0-

"Careful with that."

It was easy to miss a single small sound in meetings. Covering it would be the soft, muffled thump of footsteps on the floor, the many conversations taking place mingling at the ceiling and returning to ground level as garbled echoes, the clinking sounds of glass cups hitting wood, the occasional laugh or shriek. A single noise was easy to lose track of in all that.

Shuuichi still caught it though, even if he'd not really been looking there—a hand reaching for the glass on the windowsill, only to misjudge how far away the cup actually was and send it listing dangerously back and forth. He grabbed the cup before it could tip over and righted it, setting it firmly back on the sill.

Seiji frowned deeply at the cup, brow furrowed; Shuuichi tried to catch his eye and failed. The night outside was choked with mist, and even with the orange cast of the electrical light outside, the shadows gathering round the window were deep. That, Shuuichi supposed, could easily have accounted for this, but judging by the look of frustration that stole over Seiji's face, the poor lighting was probably not the reason for this.

Markedly more slowly this time, Seiji reached out and picked up his cup, taking a long draught of water. Shuuichi folded his arms across his chest, watching with eyebrows raised, but when Seiji put his cup back down, he looked as composed as he ever did. "What was it you were asking me, Natori-san?" he asked quietly.

The change in designation still stung, a strange, lingering pain akin to a splinter stuck under his fingernail, but Shuuichi did his best to ignore it for now. He stared at Shuuichi searchingly and said, "I was asking you how you were."

A short, trilling laugh followed this. Seiji tilted his head and his long fringe fell over his face, obscuring the eyepatch from view (Shuuichi could almost imagine that it wasn't there at all). "I am perfectly well, but I have been asked that question by many of late. What is it, then? Are you expecting me to die soon?"

Shuuichi might have bristled, if not for the comforting _normalcy_ of being jabbed like that. "No, I'm not, but you have to admit—"

"Matoba-sama!" A harried-looking ayakashi, one of the Matoba clan's, extricated himself (or herself; it wasn't always easy to tell) from the crowd and whispered something in Seiji's ear.

In an instant, any trace of levity melted from Seiji's face, replaced by exasperation. "I'll be there momentarily." The look he shot at Shuuichi was not in any way apologetic. "If you'll excuse me."

Shuuichi watched as Seiji and the ayakashi hurried off, quickly swallowed by the gloom and the press of bodies. He squeezed his eyes shut and sighed heavily. _Is this how all our conversations are going to go, now?_

He wasn't sure if Seiji even noticed it, but to Shuuichi's eyes (and the eyes of anyone else who cared to look), Seiji did _not_ look particularly well. Even through his yukata and haori, Shuuichi could tell that Seiji had lost weight. Seiji had always been slim, but Shuuichi didn't remember the bones at his wrists and hands jutting out as prominently as they did now. He'd always been pale, but Shuuichi didn't remember him looking as pallid as he did now.

A hand lit on his shoulder. "Master?" When he looked to his right, he caught sight of Sasago standing at his side, mouth quirked downwards. "What's wrong?"

He waved her off awkwardly. "It's nothing." Shuuichi never knew what to do with her concern for her (All attempts to keep their working relationship completely impersonal having failed miserably). Then again, he'd never known what to do with anyone else's concern either.

Unfortunately, Sasago was as observant now as she had ever been. She still wore her blindfold, and, indeed, Shuuichi had never seen her eyes (had no idea if she even had eyes), but he could still easily visualize the knowing look in her eyes. He _deeply_ regretted having some of the conversations he'd had with Seiji when Sasago was in earshot. "If you're worried, you should say something," she pointed out.

"I don't think he'd want any worry of mine," Shuuichi said shortly, looking away. He caught sight of movement out of the corner of his eye, saw the lizard ayakashi crawling slowly down his forearm. He scowled and readjusted his sleeve, but the ayakashi's only response was to crawl onto his hand where nothing he did would be able to hide it.

"Hmm." She didn't sound convinced, but mercifully let the matter drop. "I've been to the bulletin board," she remarked briskly. "There's a reward posting I think you should look at; it sounds promising."

"Alright, show me."

As they crossed the crowded room, Shuuichi thought that he would rather have had all the anger and irritation he'd ever felt on account of Seiji, than the worry he felt now.

-0-0-0-

The third month:

It wasn't that the ayakashi appeared on the same day every month. The conclusion several Matoba clan heads had come to throughout the ages was that the ayakashi after their eye was not a particularly clever one, but even it was not so foolish as to show up on the exact same day every month. Documentation suggested that the ayakashi's appearances ranged between every twenty-eight and every thirty days, so while there was never an assured date for when the ayakashi would next make its attack, the clan head was rarely surprised by its arrival. Rarely.

The day had been one marked by long shadows and a particularly ferocious wind that battered incessantly on the windows and the walls. Throughout it, everyone at the main house had moved about as though followed by something just out of sight, jumping a little at loud, unexpected noises. Though he hid it better than the rest of them, and would have sooner admitted to tripping over his own kimono than to feeling tense, Seiji felt the same uneasiness as them.

It would start again soon, the same cycle, every month until he died (Or failed, the significantly less desirable option). Seiji supposed that, in time, he would grow accustomed to this. He had, after all, spent his entire life watching other people go through the same thing, and they had always borne it calmly. But he found it more difficult to deal with as the months wore on, and this month he'd even devolved to glancing over his shoulder every few minutes and tensing at loud noises as his kinsmen were doing.

This month, at least, Seiji suspected he could attribute it to the weather. Waiting for the ayakashi dead-set on ripping his eye out to show up was never a pleasant thing, but it certainly wasn't pleasant when the wind was howling the way it was. He had thought that come the morning, it would be easier to bear.

The wind still wailed long into the night, and Seiji drifted in and out of sleep. Occasionally, he would linger on the edge of wakefulness and think that the wind almost sounded like the cries of a human.

Then, something slipped into the room with him.

Blinking sleep out of his eyes, Seiji sat up, but before he could get to his feet something sharp clamped around his leg and dragged him back to the ground. _Teeth_ … _Those are…_

Sleep left him as though he'd been doused with ice water. With no weapons at his disposal, he beat at the head of his attacker, trying desperately to push it away from him, but to no avail. He opened his mouth to call out for help, but no sound would come. _Scream, scream, why don't you scream, why can't you scream?_ The answer seemed close but eluded him; the pain, agonizing as it was, must have robbed him of it. Panic rose within him as he realized what this was, who and what his attacker was. _No, too soon, too soon, too soon._

Finally, his fist must have connected with something soft, for the ayakashi hissed and crept away from him. Its one eye gleamed in the dark like a lamp. Seiji tried to stand but his injured leg crumpled beneath him and he fell in a heap. It could hardly have hurt less if the ayakashi had simply ripped his leg clean off, but he still couldn't scream, or shout, or even gasp, just breathe so raggedly that every breath made his ribs ache. His heart hammered.

Their eyes met. The ayakashi barreled towards him. Seiji tried to make for the door. Too slow.

In an instant, the ayakashi fell on him, one great foot pressed down upon his chest, knocking all the breath out of him. Seiji thrust an arm up to block the ayakashi's claws, but too late or too weak, for those sharp claws struck down on his face, ripping off the eyepatch and sinking into his flesh with a wet, tearing sound.

He needed to drive it off somehow, but increasingly he was having trouble putting any thought together at all. His face felt as though it was on fire—the ayakashi didn't even seem to want his eye so much as he wanted to rip the right half of his face off and just make off with whatever was _left_ of his eye. Drawing in breath was nearly impossible; stars exploded in front of his eyes. His nostrils were full of the copper reek of blood; blood dripped into his open mouth.

Was… Was this all there was, then?

This was what he'd always feared the most, that he would fail. That the moment would come and he wouldn't be strong enough, wouldn't be able to do what needed to be done. That the moment would come and he would be consumed by it. Seiji had never thought that his death would be a peaceful one—it was not for him to die peacefully, without pain—but he had always balked at the thought of this. Death was acceptable. Failure never had been.

 _Not… Not like…_

It came to him in a flash. The ayakashi's empty eye socket was unprotected.

 _Not like this!_

With his last bit of strength, Seiji lashed out at the ayakashi's empty eye socket with his fingernails, raking them across soft flesh and digging in as much as he possibly could. And, mercifully, that had done the trick. The ayakashi gave a sharp yelp of pain and the horrible pressure on Seiji's chest lightened. There was a sound of wood shattering, the thump of feet striking the floor as it fled. Then, voices, more footsteps. A scream.

But Seiji cared little for any of it. He fell into darkness with the wind in his ears.

-0-0-0-

A story which few know:

Long ago, a head of the Matoba clan was hunting an ayakashi of terrible power, one who had killed many of his kinsmen and he himself had been unable to vanquish. Knowing that he would never be able to kill the ayakashi with his power alone, he sought out another ayakashi of great power, one who lived in a cave by a river in a land ever-brown with drought, where there were no trees and the wind blew unopposed through the grass dry and hollow.

When he came to the river and the cave, he found the ayakashi sitting inside in shadow, sitting so that Matoba could only see its left side.

The ayakashi called out to him, "I have seen your future, exorcist. Beware, for fortune is fickle and water rarely kind, and both shall be your undoing ere the end."

"I care not for the future," Matoba answered it, "only for the presence. There is an ayakashi out to kill all those who I am bound to protect, down to my smallest children. I am unable to exorcise it unaided, and have come looking for your aid.

"You are in luck then, sir. I am unable to leave this cave at any time but that of the new moon and the days preceding and following it, and today is the day of the new moon." The ayakashi eyed him shrewdly. "But what will you offer me in return?"

The ayakashi shifted its weight, and for the first time, Matoba saw its face in entirety, saw that the ayakashi's right eye socket was empty and gaped like an open wound. He pressed his hand close to his right eye, and told it, more lightly than he should have, "If you help me, I will give you that which you lack."

The ayakashi laughed. "You are treacherous; my empty eye sees right into your soul. But I will help you, and I will hold you to your oath, if I have to chase you to the gates of Yomi itself, and all your strength will not avail you."

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It had been a long time since the Matoba clan had last employed a healer ayakashi. Well, that might have been too charitable an interpretation of it. More accurately, since the first incident with the one-eyed ayakashi, the Matoba clan had been unable to temporarily contract with a healer ayakashi or even persuade a healer to tend to a wounded Matoba exorcist in exchange for some sort of gift, let alone keep one in its employ. Whereas most other exorcists, if they received injuries that, for whatever reason, they could not discuss with the outside world, could at least seek the care of a healer ayakashi, the Matoba clan had to send their wounded to the hospital and try to come up with a plausible explanation in the meantime.

Seiji couldn't remember being taken to the hospital. Actually, he couldn't remember the first two days he'd spent at the hospital, either; he had to be told as much by the rather distracted-looking nurse who came in and found him awake. She wouldn't tell him much else, though. Nanase, when she arrived, was more forthcoming.

"We found a spell laid on you to rob you of your voice, likely cast while you were still asleep," Nanase explained. Her face was set in a decidedly somber cast, her eyes glinting like ice. "We removed the spell before you were taken here; it should give you no further trouble."

"I see," Seiji croaked. His chest burned with every breath he took; speaking was nearly unbearable. He felt that way all over, through the pain was more remote, more a sting than a burn. He knew from the nurse that he'd been given a great deal of pain medication; that probably accounted for it. The swath of bandages over the right side of his face rubbed painfully against his stitches every time he moved his head. He hadn't seen what he looked like under the bandages yet. He wasn't sure he wanted to. "How long will it be…" He broke off, coughing; even through the haze of pain medicine, the ache in his chest made his eyes water. "How long before I'll be discharged?"

Nanase grimaced. "A while. If all goes well, you should be out before next month, though."

Ah yes, next month. Seiji shifted uncomfortably in bed.

 _I know what I'm facing_.

"Do you remember what happened to your grandfather?" Nanase's brow was deeply furrowed, her mouth forming a rather troubled line.

"Yes." Memory might have been faint, but Seiji had heard the story often enough since then that it would be difficult for him to _forget_ what had happened to his grandfather.

"I only ask because of how young you were when it happened. We drove the ayakashi away before it could take the eye, but he still died of his wounds." She turned her gaze away from him, staring out the window with a far-away look in her eyes. "It takes only a moment for strength to come to nothing," Nanase said, very bitterly, "if caution is thrown to the winds."

He understood. He had been careless. Seiji knew that that had been the first possible day for the ayakashi to show up, and the ayakashi had been known to show up at night; it had shown up during the middle of a New Year's celebration once. His bow was no good for such close quarters, but he'd not even had a knife in easy reach of his futon. It was a costly mistake. The next one would cost him his life, if he let it.

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Shuuichi didn't know how most hospitals were with their visitor policies—he'd never had to make an extended stay at one himself—but he was able to get in with no problem, despite the late state of the evening and the fact that he was no relation to the person he was trying to see. Despite the shelter the hospital provided from the wind and the chill of the autumn evening outside, despite the fact that Shuuichi hadn't taken off his coat, he thought it felt colder in here than it had outside. But that was the way he'd always felt in hospitals. All the big-city hospitals he'd ever been in were breeding grounds for ayakashi who fed off the energies of the sick and the dying. Rural hospitals weren't as bad, since the local exorcists made sure those kinds of ayakashi could never thrive there, but Shuuichi still expected to see eyes peering at him from out of the shadows.

The journey down the hallways and up the elevators was a mostly quiet one. Shuuichi occasionally caught the staticky strains of a television program playing, or the squeak of shoes on highly-waxed linoleum floors. Sometimes, an air conditioning unit would bang and splutter into life.

When he came to the door of the room where Seiji was staying, he stopped dead in his tracks.

It was the first time in months that he had seen Seiji in full light. He was sitting up in bed reading some thick, hardback book, and, drenched in harsh fluorescent light, Seiji looked paler and thinner than Shuuichi had ever seen him. His skin had all the color of paper, and he seemed about as substantial as paper, too, fit to blow away in a strong breeze; the light seemed practically to pass through him. In place of the now-typical eyepatch, the right side of Seiji's face was covered by bandages; his shirt hung open far enough that Shuuichi could spy bandages wound round his chest as well. A pair of crutches stood leaning against the wall.

' _Minor injuries,' they said. 'Nothing to worry about', they said. Yeah, right. Looks more like he got out alive by the skin of his teeth._ Shuuichi clenched his fists. Frustration welled up inside of him. _Why is it always like this_?

Shuuichi was still hovering in the doorway when Seiji, who was sitting with his right side to the door, finally noticed him. Seiji said nothing, apparently electing instead to stare sharply at Shuuichi, his mouth pressed into a tight, almost unhappy-looking line.

Feeling more intensely awkward with each passing second, Shuuichi produced from his coat the small bottle of liquor he'd smuggled into the hospital (And wondered for the first time why he'd thought this was such a good idea). "Erm… Happy birthday?"

Seiji's visible eye flicked from Shuuichi's face to the liquor bottle, and back to Shuuichi's face again. He sighed and set his book aside. "My birthday was yesterday," he said flatly. "And doesn't alcohol stain your teeth?"

"Hey, nothing could dim _this_ smile."

"Oh, just come inside, before someone sees you and decides to put tape over your mouth for the good of humanity."

Shuuichi slipped inside and held the bottle out to Seiji, but Seiji just stared at it dubiously. "It's not poisoned or anything like that." Shuuichi uncorked the bottle and took a small sip of the liquor. "See? It's good. It…" He coughed, his eyes watering. "It stings a bit going down."

Seiji shot another long, dubious look at the bottle, and a decidedly fixed stare at Shuuichi. "No thank you," he said quietly.

Somehow, Shuuichi wasn't terribly surprised by that. He tucked the bottle back into the pocket in his coat. Unfortunately, he found himself after that rather incapable of finding anything to say, and was left to stuff his hands in his pockets, staring around the room aimlessly. He tried not to look at Seiji. He didn't know why, but for some reason, it just hurt to look at him.

Then, Seiji asked suddenly, "Why are you here?"

The long, hard look Seiji directed at him wasn't one Shuuichi liked. He squared his shoulders defensively and frowned. "Why shouldn't I? I-I don't know how it looks to you, but all of this…" He broke off, gesturing at the crutches leaning against the wall and the bandages plastered to Seiji's face. Shuuichi tried to imagine how Seiji must have looked when he was first brought into the hospital, but all that served was to make his blood pound in his ears. "You…" There was a voice in the back of his mind screaming at him to be circumspect, but tonight, Shuuichi was feeling much more like he had as a teenager, and as a teenager, he'd never been good at being circumspect, not under circumstances like this. "Aren't you _ever_ worried about yourself?! Doesn't it _ever_ bother you that that ayakashi could kill you?! It almost did! Doesn't _that_ bother you?!"

He was shouting. He hadn't realized until he'd hit the last word and he could still hear his voice echoing off of the walls. Shuuichi took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to force himself back to some level of calmness. He couldn't remember the last time he'd lost his temper so completely. That wasn't something you did, as an actor, not when every aspect of your life could all too easily and all too suddenly become far more public than you wished it to. That wasn't something you did, as an exorcist, when ayakashi used cracks in your heart as doors, and put down roots of choking vines once they got inside. But then, Seiji had always had a knack for getting under his skin, no matter what either of them did.

Seiji said nothing for a long time. He leaned back into the pillows, his eye never once leaving Shuuichi's face. A shadow fell over his face. "I chose this," he said finally, measuredly.

Shuuichi snorted. "Sure."

Seiji's eye flashed. Quick as a snake striking at pray, he grabbed Shuuichi's wrist and held fast to it in a painfully tight grip. "Do not interfere," he hissed.

"Let go! What do you think you're—"

"Do you understand? Do _not_ interfere. This has nothing to do with you." Seiji gritted his teeth, his nostrils flaring. "What do you think you could do, anyway?" he ground out. "With your kind of power?"

Shuuichi felt as though he'd been slapped. When he finally managed to respond, it was to affix an especially strained, bitter smile to his face. "Relax, Matoba. If you want to paint a bull's-eye on your back, I'm not going to stop you."

Matoba flinched as though struck, but Shuuichi could take no pleasure in it. For a moment, Matoba's grip on his wrist actually tightened, but then, slowly, almost reluctantly, he let go. Shuuichi didn't see any reason to stay after that.

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Seiji watched him leave, burning a hole in Shuuichi's back as he walked further and further away, but though the words seared like fire in his throat, he did not call him back.

He knew what he wanted. It was what he had always wanted—someone who spoke to him as 'Seiji', someone who saw him that way, without any of the baggage that came with the name 'Matoba', someone clean of all that. Shuuichi had popped into his life one night, and there was that person, and look, it was someone his age, someone talented, someone Seiji actually thought he could like. It was a dream he had.

Yes, a dream. A pleasant dream it had been too, and long had it gone on, but no one can sleep forever, and when the sleeper wakes, the dream must end.

Seiji was no longer a child with a child's freedom. There was too much for him to do, too many people who looked to him for guidance. He could not dream dreams of his own, when he answered to them. He could not be 'Seiji' to any of them. He couldn't even really be that to himself.

He was Matoba, and Sh— _Natori_ was, at best, a distraction he could not afford.

Seiji felt very tired, all of a sudden, and he knew not what to attribute it to. He did not think he would dream tonight, though, and he thought that that would be a good thing, this time. He dreamt only of claws and teeth, these days.

(He would not miss him. He would not.)

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(The first day he was home, Seiji wandered away from the rest and hobbled around the grounds on his crutches. If he was to walk, he preferred to do it alone; between the state of his leg and his ribs, he couldn't deny that he needed these crutches, but that did nothing to dull the bitter sting of humiliation at having everyone see him in such a state.

One of the bushes began to shiver too strongly for the wind to be the culprit, and though it was not the time of the new moon, Seiji's breath caught in his throat. He took a step back, dropping one of his crutches in favor of the switchblade in his pocket. His heart beat so fast he thought it might burst.

But then, something crept out of the bush, and he saw that it was only one of the stray cats that wandered the grounds of the main house. The switchblade clattered to the ground with the crutch. Seiji lowered his face into his hands, fearful energy giving way to exhaustion, and for a moment, he honestly thought he might cry.)

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Matoba Seiji was released from the hospital early in November. Maybe a month after that, his ribs had healed enough that he could practice archery again without experiencing the sort of pain that would have made even him balk and turn away. It was difficult to adjust to, not least because he had been out of practice for so long, though the fact that his right eye no longer opened all the way, but given time and diligence, he could shoot just as accurately as he had been able to before.

Time passed. The stitches on his face were removed; no longer was there anything to itch or rub painfully against beneath his eyepatch. Three months were given over to physical therapy on account of his leg before the hospital decided that it had done all it could for Seiji. It was the better part of a year before he stopped limping (The better part of a year before he stopped working himself into exhaustion trying to conceal the fact that he limped at all).

When physical wellness returned to him completely, Seiji set to work getting some of the houses in the mountains that had fallen into disrepair ready for use again. The Matoba clan had had to abandon them decades ago, when they'd not had the money to maintain any estate but the main one, but the lean times were long past and there was no reason not to make use of them now. There was plenty of work to be done. The ayakashi in the mountains had been given free rein for far too long.

There were things that did not leave even after the passage of a year.

Sleep was difficult to come by, difficult to keep, and impossible to find on windy nights. A small noise could wake him now, send him reaching for a knife. He would wake suddenly from dreams and his hand would fly to the right side of his face, pulling at the eyepatch and feeling desperately for his eye. He looked for it in the morning anyways.

Loud noises were, in general, ill-appreciated. The household figured that one out fairly quickly, and the house became a quiet one.

On the rare occasion that Seiji went without the right side of his face covered, he avoided mirrors. He knew what the scars looked like, thank you. He had no desire to be reminded of past failures, not when there was still so much to be done.

In quiet moments, even when he was alone, he found that a fixed smile still hovered on his lips. He was not sure why, but these days, it rarely occurred to him to ask. It wasn't important, anymore.

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What glimpses they caught of each other now came at meetings, from afar. Shuuichi would catch a quick glimpse of Matoba from the other side of the room, hear that laugh that had grown tinny and shrill in the past year (a laugh he barely recognized, but still irresistibly drew his attention), see long, swishing hair out of the corner of his eye.

Sometimes, not often these days, but sometimes, their eyes would meet, but Matoba was always standing so far away that Shuuichi could not begin to guess what kind of look was on his face. It didn't matter, anyways. They rarely spoke now. What was there to say?

(Still, he caught himself watching, and assumed it was just the sake, or the way the shadows seemed to cling to Matoba like cobwebs, these days. He didn't miss him. He didn't.)

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This is a tale no one knows:

Once upon a time, there were two boys who didn't really understand each other. They skirted the edge of understanding but never came into its light. All they really seemed to understand, and sometimes not even that much, was that the time they spent together was not unpleasant. But that was a long time ago.


End file.
